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Client: Al Jazeera

Project: Design, Supply and Installation of Production Facilities and Studio

Gearhouse Broadcast, the internationally renowned broadcast services specialist, has delivered a fully operational temporary television news studio and production control room for Al Jazeera at its headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

The studio was commissioned to house its 24-hour rolling news channel while its existing studio is renovated. Due to the continual output of the channel, the switchover from the main studio to the new temporary one had to be seamless, and require only minimal external technical support to ensure continuity was maintained. Gearhouse Broadcast, which has worked with Al Jazeera previously on a number of projects, including its Studio 2 upgrade and its coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, provided the design, equipment and crew for the new studio, as well as full on-site training for Al Jazeera’s production team.

Once the initial switchover had taken place, the next stage of the project was to upgrade the temporary studio to a fully HD operation, which has again been completed with no disruption to the output.

The new studio is equipped with seven Sony HDC-1500 camera channels, three EVS XT3 production servers, four EVS IPDirector production asset management systems, three Final Cut Pro edit suites and a Snell Sirius router.

A Thomson XtenDD35 production switcher was initially installed and then replaced with a Grass Valley Kayenne video production software platform as part of the subsequent HD upgrade. Within the studio, Gearhouse Broadcast built and lit a full cyclorama green-screen studio to allow chroma keying so that the look of Al Jazeera’s regular studio could be recreated cost-effectively, maintaining the broadcaster’s easily recognisable branding.